Jylana Sheats, Affiliated Faculty

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Dr. Jylana L. Sheats, PhD, MPH is a behavioral scientist and educator with a passion for working with racial/ethnic and vulnerable populations to reduce health disparities and promote health equity. Within the broader fields of nutrition and physical activity, her research is focused on: 1) examining psychosocial, social, environmental, and policy-related determinants of obesogenic behaviors and chronic diseases; 2) developing and testing technologies to deliver obesity and chronic disease-related behavior change interventions; and 3) utilizing community-based and participatory strategies to promote healthy communities in the US and abroad. As a Tulane Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s (BIRCWH) Health Scholar, Dr. Sheats is developing and testing the acceptance and effectiveness of a culturally-informed, mobile phone-based intervention to improve the food-related behaviors of obese and overweight African American adults. It is through this work that she will also identify sex-differences related to the acceptance and effectiveness of the intervention as well.

Prior to Tulane, Dr. Sheats was a Social Science Research Associate at the Stanford Prevention Research Center’s Healthy Aging Research and Technology Solutions (HARTS) Lab in the Stanford School of Medicine. Utilizing her academic and research training in behavioral science from Spelman College, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Indiana University School of Public Health, and Stanford School of Medicine, she has experience as a public health practitioner and led and co-directed community and technology-based (i.e., embodied conversational agents, SMS, mobile apps, wireless and sensor-based devices) studies to promote health behavior change.

The Tulane Prevention Research Center is a member of the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research Centers Program, supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under cooperative agreement #U48DP005050.